Blackout: A Romance Anthology

by Stephanie St. Klaire

  Ellie was quiet, and for just a second, the desolation in her eyes sent a chill through me. But my heart was all but encased in ice. I knew somehow whatever I said had hurt her. I certainly hadn’t meant to, and I felt it fiercely. On the heels of that icy sensation was a burning need to make it right.

  “I don’t suppose that came out the way I meant it,” I said slowly.

  Ellie took a swallow of her whiskey and shook her head. “I don’t know how you meant it, but I don’t have any expectations.”

  As I sat there staring at her, it felt as if a line of electricity sizzled in the air between us. I certainly wished I could take my words back. And that didn’t make a lick of sense.

  It chafed at me to hear Ellie say she had no expectations. I could tolerate my own bitterness and cynicism about life, but not hers.

  My thoughts began to roll down the track where I told myself she deserved to have someone—someone who could worship that hint of innocence she carried with her. With the wholesome sultriness that came so naturally to her, I found it a damn miracle another man hadn’t already staked his claim. Though, most definitely not her asshole ex.

  The problem with this line of thinking was that the moment my mind began following it, a fierce sense of possessiveness took hold. I might not have any expectations, but I didn’t want anyone else to have Ellie. I was quite certain—crazy as it was—that only I could appreciate her for the woman she was. Which was beyond crazy. It was insane.

  I was so unsettled with my reaction I gulped the rest of my whiskey in one swallow. Ellie watched me quietly, something flickering in her gaze. She looked away, her eyes scanning the restaurant curiously.

  Our waiter conveniently arrived, likely having noticed my drink was empty. I ordered another and forced my mind to be more disciplined. I might want Ellie and I might’ve been reckless enough to kiss her in the elevator, but my life had no room for anything beyond casual.

  The night—or rather, the morning, if you prefer to be exact—carried on. We had our meal, and I swept her off with me to the promised game of blackjack. She was surprisingly good and teased me with tales of how she learned. Apparently, her father had loved to gamble for fun and taught her and Aidan to play when they were young. She freely admitted she rarely gambled for money. She refused to let me bet on her behalf and proceeded to win a tidy sum of money, quitting while she was well ahead.

  Las Vegas spun its magic. Whenever I was here, which wasn’t too often, it was easy to feel as though you were suspended in time—a time of glitter when night and day turned upside down.

  Despite the state of my body, and my cock’s rather persistent protest, I determined I needed to keep my distance from the sweet and sultry Ellie.

  I refrained from any more drinks after those first two, although she had a few more as the night wore on and was quite tipsy when I escorted her back to the room. She was just tipsy enough I could easily rationalize I would be taking advantage if I dared to kiss her again. That was my excuse, not my body’s intense reaction to her and the underlying fear that somehow, she could rattle the cage I had built around my heart.

  It was probably four in the morning, or thereabouts, when she turned in the doorway of her bedroom in the suite, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe. She held her sandals in her hand with her fingers looped through the straps. My eyes landed on her bright red toenails, the splash of color fitting. Her dark hair was tousled from brushing it out of the way a few too many times as we had meandered through the crowded casinos.

  The night ended when she asked me to take one more walk just so she could see everything. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes snagged mine. I wanted to touch her so fucking badly. My eyes dipped down, taking in the curve of her hips, the way her blouse fell open slightly, offering me a tease of lace barely peeking out past where her blouse came together in the center.

  “Thank you for tonight, Jacob,” she said softly, her voice raspy from being surrounded by smoke and drinking all night.

  My cock protested again, pressing against my zipper. I willfully ignored it and inclined my head. “You’re quite welcome. Thank you for the company. Las Vegas is a city better enjoyed with someone else.”

  She smiled and a hint of bitterness dashed across her face. I knew she was recalling precisely why she was here. Her idiot ex and the trip they were supposed to take together.

  “Good night,” she said, roughly pushing away from the door and turning.

  The door closed softly behind her with a click and I stared at it, seriously contemplating for a few seconds the idea of walking right over, opening that door, and persuading her to share my bed.

  That was plain crazy.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jacob

  I rose mid-morning after a solid five hours of sleep. I figured Ellie would still be asleep. After a quick check, merely peeking into her bedroom to see she was sound asleep, I left a note on the counter that I would be working for the day. I also texted her phone with my number.

  I had several meetings today. The sole reason I was in Las Vegas was to meet with investors and shore up some collaborative partnerships for my software and smartphone applications. There was a conference here on tech security, which made it quite convenient for me to meet with multiple business partners in one location, rather than scattered across the country.

  Being based in Seattle gave me a little breathing room from the hub of Silicon Valley. I preferred it that way, if only because it prevented me from being pressured by irrational trends that could drive unwise business decisions.

  Walking to one of my meetings at a restaurant a few hotels down from where I was staying, it occurred to me Ellie and I both lived in Seattle. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known that fact before. Yet, now that I’d had more than a glimpse of her, now that I had experienced her answering desire, and now that my own body had made its preferences astonishingly clear, the fact that Ellie and I could be something more than a one-off, one- night stand in Las Vegas struck me at my core, chinking the armor of my cynicism.

  I literally shook my head in an effort to kick her out of my mind.

  “That bad to see me?” Darren Greene’s voice reached me.

  Following the sound, I looked to my right to see him already seated at a booth in the restaurant. It barely registered for me that I had paused beside the hostess who directed me this way.

  “Oh no, just puzzling over some accounting details,” I said, the lie rolling smoothly off my tongue.

  Darren owned a security business right here in Las Vegas. He was also one of the hosts for this conference. I slipped into the booth across from him and smiled. “How are you this morning?”

  “Quite well, but then, unlike most everyone visiting here, I had a full night’s sleep,” he replied, his brown eyes catching mine.

  I chuckled, reaching for the coffee the waitress had poured as I was sitting down. “So true. I got a full five hours though.”

  I knew Darren from visiting here before. Las Vegas might be one of the most profitable cities to be handling security, and Darren had his thumb on the pulse of the entire city.

  He contracted for some of the most high-end casinos and hotels in town and leveraged those relationships for worldwide coordination in the security field. He and Aidan were friends as well. Aidan had no interest in expanding his business, although he occasionally handled national and international jobs when it suited him.

  After a sip of my coffee, I glanced over. “Is anyone else meeting us?”

  “Oh no. I wanted to pitch this to you first. I want to integrate your software into all of my systems here in Las Vegas. We can run it as a pilot and see how it goes. As it is right now, people either have your app on their phones, or you’re doing it for security companies, if I understand correctly, right?”

  “Yes. So far, that’s how we’ve done it. I’m not sure how what you’re proposing would be different.”

  Darren nodded, brushing a loose lock of his brown hair back from his fo
rehead. “This way, we can link it into every system—banking and whatnot. Privacy is becoming more and more of an issue. I find our guys are spending a ton of time chasing down potential weak points into various secure systems. I’d like to centralize it without increasing risk. It’ll be a closed system for each hotel.”

  His comments showed he had anticipated my protest about centralizing it. I chuckled before taking another sip of my coffee. “Fair enough. I was going to say, as soon as it’s tapped into anything that’s open source, it puts my system at risk. But if each system stays closed, that would mitigate it. If I’m going to do this with anyone, I would do it with you.”

  Darren flashed a quick grin.

  “Let’s hash out how to deal with it, but I’ve got to look at the coding for every single system if I’m gonna feel comfortable with this.”

  Darren knew me well and had considered every contingency. After we finished breakfast, we left to go to his offices to work. Between shared projects and conference business, we had plenty to keep us busy. I ignored the tiny pull to come up with some excuse to return to my hotel to check on something. But I had no excuse, none whatsoever. I just wanted to see Ellie.

  Fortunately, or so I thought at first, I had enough to focus on that Ellie only intruded on my thoughts periodically. By the time early evening rolled around and the lights began coming on in Vegas, I glanced at my watch and saw it was 5:45 p.m. I knew Ellie was here for three more days. I didn’t want to leave her to her own devices at night. I usually wouldn’t worry much about someone else’s plan, but there was that tug. I couldn’t stop thinking about that reckless kiss. I assured myself I had nothing but noble intentions.

  Darren dispatched me back to my hotel with his car service, and I arrived a few minutes after six. I was weaving through the crowded casino to get to the private bank of elevators at the back when everything went black.

  By black, I mean completely dark. Every single light went out. There was a moment of startled silence, and you could feel the room almost collectively holding its breath. After a moment, a few emergency lights came on, indicating where the exits were. A glance at the windows gave me nothing more than the last lingering rays of the sun above the skyline in the distance.

  An urgency struck me. I needed to find Ellie. Now. When nothing changed and no lights came back on, people began to pull out their phones and frantically check. Battery power would last us a bit if this was anything other than a blip.

  I kept expecting the generators to kick in, but they didn’t. Two words beat a staccato tempo in my brain. Find Ellie.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ellie

  I stood in the middle of a crowded walkway in the casino, the room abruptly pitch-black. Everyone froze. I could feel the collective confusion and the weighted expectation that, surely, the lights would come back on.

  They didn’t. After a moment of silence, voices picked up around me, murmurs running through the room. People were checking their phones. When I glanced to my screen, there was no reception whatsoever.

  I told myself to stay calm. Generators would kick in, and everything would carry on as usual. Whatever had caused the power to blink out would be resolved.

  Something felt off. My gut pinged with anxiety. After everyone had frozen for a moment, people began to move, following the dim lighting of the emergency exit signs. My anxiety ramped up a few more notches. I was alone in an endless maze of interconnected hotels and casinos surrounded by strangers. I knew a whopping total of three people in this city, two of whom I didn’t care to see at all.

  I frantically tapped at my phone, seeing the lack of signal and wishing it away. I could still read the text Jacob had sent me this morning.

  Ellie, I have meetings most of the day. I’ll be back early this evening. I hope we can have dinner again.

  I desperately wanted to reply and ask him where he was. I had no idea how to find him. The sun had dipped below the horizon within the last hour. Whatever glimmers of light were left outside, I couldn’t tell. The thousands of people crowding the Las Vegas casinos had been plunged into darkness.

  The murmured voices rose in volume, people calling out questions, while I stayed frozen where I was. I suddenly wished I had more nerve last night. As I had stood in the bedroom door looking at Jacob, so damn handsome it almost hurt to look at him, I wanted to walk up to him and get another one of his kisses. I wanted far more than kisses.

  But I hadn’t had the nerve. My confidence had taken quite a hit last year—thanks to Wayne and Cheryl. If you were wondering, it’s bad enough when someone cheats on you. It’s far worse when it’s with one of your friends. It’s like the layers of trust are violated on a deeper level, adding a stinging bonus point to the betrayal.

  In the darkness, I lost my bearings and my sense of which way to go to get back to the hotel suite. In this casino, I was on a ground floor. Jacob’s suite was high in the sky. I would have to climb stairs in the darkness to get there, likely joined by hordes of strangers.

  I began moving, deliberately and cautiously, in the direction where I thought I needed to go. In Las Vegas, with its maze of interconnected buildings, it would not be difficult to get lost, even with all the lights on. In the darkness, with the murmur of panic running amongst the crowds of people, it was definitely a shade more difficult.

  I beat back my anxiety. I felt unsteady and confused and something felt off. It was one thing to lose power, yet another for the generators to fail, and yet another for all cell reception to go out.

  I wished Jacob were right here with me. He had a strong, protective presence like my brother. Well, it was quite a bit different, seeing as I felt nothing but brotherly affection for Aidan, while Jacob had me hot and bothered with nothing more than a look. I had just about talked myself into a fling with him last night, but then, I wasn’t really a fling kind of girl.

  Bodies bumped into me, and it felt as if I was in a cave. What appeared to be a convenience when the power was working felt like a prison when it wasn’t, with all the hallways and only a few windows looking outward. A hand squeezed my ass, and I swatted it away, a flash of anger piercing me.

  I sternly told myself I would just keep walking. I would find the right place, and I would go up however many stairs I had to climb. No matter what, I had faith Jacob would find me. I just didn’t know quite where he was right now.

  A riff of fear chased down my spine, and I told myself I was overreacting. The lights would come back on in any minute. All the while, I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

  I reached an area that intercepted with a hallway with windows to the outside. I was stunned when I glanced over my shoulder to see the darkness stretching out. The moon was rising above the mountains that sat at a distance from Las Vegas across the desert. That light was a sharp contrast to the sheer absence of it everywhere else. The famous excess and hedonism of Las Vegas in the desert was temporarily offline.

  From the streets outside, I heard voices shouting. I paused, taking a minute to study the mountains. I’d looked at them this morning and knew the orientation of where one taller peak lined up with the hotel where I was staying with Jacob.

  A shaft of relief pierced me when I identified it under the silver glow of the moon.

  I didn’t have the virtue of many landmarks to use, but I could guess I needed to pass through one more building based on where I thought the mountain peak was.

  I kept walking, along with many others. With nothing but the dim glow of emergency exit lights, there were a few panicky voices and a hum of distress running through the crowd. I kept moving, with more bodies bumping into me, and another hand colliding with my hip, although this one felt more accidental than purposeful.

  By the time I reached what I thought was the juncture to the right hotel, my heart was pounding, and there was a sheen of sweat on my skin. People kept calling out to staff because they were everywhere, and no one knew anything.

  I realized I knew where the bank of elevators was,
but not the stairs. I was still largely blind from the darkness in the crowd, although a few people were using lights from their phones. I didn’t dare because I didn’t want the battery to die too soon. At this rate, my gut was telling me we weren’t going to get power soon.

  I figured I’d find my way to the elevators and perhaps I could see signs to the stairs from there. Moments later, I got there to find a line and suddenly wanted to cry. The idea of climbing that many stairs seemed utterly exhausting.

  Suddenly, I felt a hand press between my shoulder blades. “Ellie.” I recognized Jacob’s voice instantly. In sheer relief, I turned into him. He pulled me into his embrace, strong and sheltering.

  I wasn’t prone to having meltdowns. I generally took things in stride. But I was rattled and disoriented by the situation. I realized how tightly I was coiled inside the moment he held me close. I buried my face in his chest and almost burst into tears.

  I took several shuddering breaths, breathing in his crisp, masculine scent. Regardless of the situation, my body responded to the feel of him and his scent wrapping around me. His hand circled on my back as he murmured wordlessly into my hair. When I thought I had it together and wouldn’t cry, I lifted my head, barely able to make out his features in the darkness.

  “I’m so glad you found me,” I whispered.

  “I don’t know if you can be as glad as I am.” His voice was somber and taut with constrained concern.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “No idea. Something’s wrong because the generators should’ve come on, and they haven’t. There’s no cell reception either.”

  “I know. I was going to text and ask you where you were.”

  “I’m right here now,” he said, this time his voice a little more relaxed.

  “Should we try to get up to the room?”

  “I’m not sure. On the one hand, if we have any chance of picking up a signal, at that elevation, our chances would be better. On the other, that’s a lot of stairs to climb. And if the power doesn’t come back on, I’m not so sure it’s a smart choice, seeing as we probably can’t get into our room without breaking down the door since it’s activated by a key card.”